In the recent approval of the General State Budget for the year 2023, an amendment to the Accounts Auditing Law has been incorporated that will enable the auditors of Public Interest Entities (PIEs) to extend the audit contracts of such entities up to 20 years, if a public tender is held at the end of the current maximum period of 10 years, or up to 24 years if a joint audit with another auditor is adopted (14 additional years instead of the current 4).
These changes are in line with the European Regulation on the statutory audit of EIPs, which, at the time, our legislator did not wish to adopt as it was more restrictive.
Regarding the extension of the joint audit period from 4 to 14 years, there seems to be a general consensus that it will help to reduce the concentration of the PIE audit market, to make the market more dynamic and to reduce the systemic risk of the market by incorporating competition from other qualified medium-sized firms.
Driving greater competence and independence was one of the main objectives of the EU reform carried out in 2014 on the statutory audit of annual accounts and consolidated annual accounts and the specific requirements for the statutory audit of PIEs.
Our legislator included in the Account Auditing Law of 2015 (LAC 22/2015, of July 20) a certain encouragement of joint audit, by facilitating in the extensions of the audit contracts of EIPs four additional years of term if the same auditor was hired together with another auditor for a joint performance as auditors in that additional period. This was too short a period to motivate a viable alternative to the single auditor audit model, given the short time frame it allowed to make joint audit engagements attractive in that period. The fact is that, since the approval of the LAC in 2015, joint audit experiences in Spain have been few and far between.
The extension of the term to 14 years will provide a much greater incentive for joint audit and will make it possible to open up the PIE audit market.
The practice of joint auditing has important benefits for the audited company (improved transparency and quality of the financial information and of the audit work, greater objectivity and independence, promotion of a critical view of the technical problems, etc.). But, additionally, it is a formula that allows the entry of new players into the audit market of large companies, which is particularly uncompetitive in our country, by facilitating an increase in the supply of viable alternatives to compete in the process of choosing an auditor.
Undoubtedly, the extension of the term to 14 years will provide a much greater incentive for joint audits and will make it possible to open up the EIPs audit market, ensuring that the supply of audit services will be offered by a greater number of firms with sufficient capacity, reputation and credibility.
Regarding the increase to 20 years of the maximum term for auditing EIPs if a public tender is held at the end of the first 10 years, although it may pose a threat to independence by allowing the current auditor to remain in office for a further 10 years, the fact that his appointment is subject to a public tender with sufficient guarantees, together with the current market and company context, where the need to apply good corporate governance measures that facilitate and promote auditor rotation as a healthy management policy has already been internalized, will mean that this approved measure may not be widely used and, therefore, may not have a perverse effect on the auditor's independence.
